ward shadows spare
our dear mother, but daguerreotyped all manner of merry-andrews on her
sober satin dress, as she sat over on a lounge, quietly talking with
my dear, sweet Edgar, who employed his leisure moments in throwing
sundry loving glances over at me. Nor did these weird shadows spare
our Cousin Jehoiakim Johnson in the great old-fashioned arm-chair,
where he had flung himself, seemingly wrapped in meditation most
profound. They frolicked over his broad, square shoulders like the
Liliputs upon Gulliver, dancing all sorts of fantastic dances, pulling
at his ears, and tweaking his substantial nose, when a snore of most
immense magnitude broke on our quiet ears. Then another and another,
each louder than the last. Ah! Cousin Jehoiakim, most profound was thy
meditation.

Now I am not going to weary your patience by telling you how just then
our "help" entered, one bearing a tray-full of tall sperm candles,
another an immense waiter, crowned with the thick-gilt, untarnished
china, that had been handed down in our family by four successive
generations--we had begged our dear mother to let the tea, the tea
only, be handed around as it was done in Boston; she in an evil hour
consenting. Nor how Cousin Jehoiakim, aroused from his meditation by
the glare of light, starting up, cast his eyes upon Mercy, the stout
serving maiden, and bearer of that same precious porcelain--for which
my dear mother's reverence was as great, every whit, as that of
Charles Lamb's for old China; and how the next moment the waiter was
in the hands of my six feet seven and a-half cousin, with "Du let me
help you, young woman!" and how the next instant the six feet seven
and a-half formed a horizontal line with the floor, instead of a
perpendicular one; and how the glittering fragments of gold and white
glistened from under every chair, and from the hearth, and out from
among the ashes, like unto so many evil eyes glaring upon him for his
stupidity and carelessness; and how little Fanny unwound from one foot
of the prostrate six feet seven and a-half several yards of snow-white
muslin--the innocent cause of the disaster; and how, light as a bird,
she sprung, merrily laughing, from the room, with the fluttering
fragments of her cobweb dress gathered in an impromptu drapery around
her graceful little form.

No; I will not fatigue you with the history of that unlucky adventure;
nor how, but a short time after, when we had taken tea from less
costl